More from Class Bravo

While Christy and I approached runway 18L, the traffic information system (TIS) constantly announced, "traffic! traffic!". But we knew that. We could see the steady stream of jets lined up for 18R and the other stream of jets lined up for 23. Although the tower had asked me to keep my speed up on approach because of jet traffic behind me, the TIS showed no on lined up on 18L who was within 3 miles of me. As we sat waiting to be cleared to cross runway 23, Christy started to worry about traffic landing on top of us. I wasn't worried, though. The jet that landed on 23 startled her, but we were perfectly safe. Shortly after the jet passed, the tower cleared me to cross the runway.

The controller asked, "Cessna 7-7-0, are you familiar with the Charlotte airport".

I replied, "Only as a passenger, 7-7-0".

He then told me to taxi straight ahead on 18L and turn left on Delta-4 and that would take me straight to WilsonAir. He also told me to contact ground on "point 9", meaning contact ground control on 121.9.

Flying home was equally as exciting. After loading and preflighting, I called for clearance. I'm used to receiving clearances that are different from what I filed; usually I'll be assigned "radar vectors to XYZ" - when I file direct to XYZ. That's no big deal. This time it was different. I was cleared to depart via the HUGO-8 departure, then as filed. He did not assign a transition route, which made it difficult to plug in to the GPS as it expects a transition. That didn't matter though because as soon as I departed, the tower had me turn to a heading of 270 - completely off course for the HUGO-8 departure from 18L. I'm sure that they just wanted me out of the way of the jets that were departing from 18C.

Before all that happened, though, we had to taxi. After being cleared to taxi to 18L intersection Alpha, I was told there would be a three minute delay after the DeHavilland Dash-8 departed before me. I completed the run-up on the roll and stopped at the hold short line. When I announced that I was ready to go, the tower reiterated the 3 minute wait, to which I replied, "Understood, 7-7-0". We were cleared for take off and I responded, "Skyhawk 7-7-0, cleared for takeoff on 1-8-Left" and we began to roll.

Once we were airborn, the controllers had a field day vectoring me left and right. Finally I was told to resume own navigation and I flew direct to Columbia. We had awful headwinds for this trip. The briefing showed that we would encounter 20 to 24 knot winds almost directly in our face no matter what altitude we flew at.

The rest of the trip was uneventful although we began to encounter clouds the further south we went. We bounced through them without shaking any vital parts loose. Christy slept for much of the trip.

For the landing we were cleared for the visual to 14 and the winds were reported to be 100 at 12. The were a bit gusty and the plane just didn't want to stay on the ground. After initial contact, the plane became airborne again and I held the nose up and she dropped to the ground again. I still managed to make the first turnoff.

The flying this weekend was great. Flying in and out of Class B airspace without any miscues is particularly satisfying. I logged 2.9 hours CRG-CLT with about 0.2 instrument and 3.1 CLT-CRG with .4 instrument.